Terra Subter Mare
by Nosferatank
Summary: Terra Subter Mare: Latin - Seafloor, literally "ground beneath the ocean". The split of a dragon god's mind has consequences. Some of those consequences are alive.
1. Chapter 1

Queen Arete despised politics.

However, she must acknowledge that it was political maneuvering that allowed her the distinct pleasure of foisting the bureaucratic nonsense onto her husband, Matsya, and the Parliament while she took a much-deserved vacation to see her sister. Really, the country wouldn't fall apart in her absence, and young Azura would benefit from the quiet as opposed to the bustle of Gyges.

Arete's departure wasted no time, mounting her pegasus destrier after giving the Brionac Spear to Matsya, and setting out with only four Falcoknight guards, Azura nestled to her breast. At the very least Arete could get some silence for once, even with the repetitive sound of thrumming wingbeats.

The queen did feel some trepidation leaving with the legendary spear behind, particularly in the hands of one who could not actually wield it. However, it was the a symbol of Anankos's blessing and the divine right to rule, a lynchpin of Gyges. How could Valla trust in the judgement of a ruler, though he cannot manipulate the Dragon Veins, if he could not at least hold the physical promise given to the First King Ryurei? Thus, to stabilize the court in her absence, Arete left the spear behind with her husband.

She much preferred magecraft anyways.

Glaucon was fairly small as far as private royal retreats go, keeping only four bedrooms, a kitchen, a few sitting rooms, and a center courtyard garden. One of her ancestors, Makaidos she believed his name was, built it with privacy, and if need be, secrecy, in mind. Thus, it was similarly staffed: only a minimal amount of servants and a few guards were present. An excellent place for visiting family if Arete thought so herself.

After landing with a soft jolt, Arete dismounted, keeping careful grip on her daughter, and turned around to see Mikoto already waiting for her. The sisters each gave a short bow to the others, before Arete waved at the Falcoknights to return home, as she had no luggage: there were supplies enough here, and really aside from her tomes she had little she cared to bring. Formalities now aside, Mikoto strode forward and hugged her sister fiercely, but not before snagging Azura, who was already reaching for her aunt.

"Ah, betrayed by my own child. I never thought the day would come." Arete said ruefully, watching as Mikoto wiggled her fingers for baby Azura to grab.

"Well, perhaps she tires of the same arms for hours" Mikoto looks up from playing with her niece. "How was your journey anyways? Boring as expected?"

Arete snorted in a rather unqueenly manner "Please. The silence was gratifying: at least the Falcoknights know better than to hem and haw and pester when there's a job to be done."

"Now if we may, I'm a bit peckish and I daresay your niece is as well. Shall we?"

"Oh, I already had the kitchens prepare something for you!"

"Perhaps I could sleep too. Ancients know I've not been getting enough of it lately."

Arete's leave of absence was just as calm and blissfully predictable as she could have hoped. She would dine with her blood-family, walk or ride with her sister, read, and receive messenger hawks from Gyges, proving that her work would never be far behind her (Arete was sure she would be dreaming of triplicate soon). The queen even had time to devote to researching and altering Hoshidan spell-tablets: she couldn't exactly experiment with native Vallite song-weaving, not with her bloodline.

Arete opens her second week at Glaucon with a face-full of feathers as she opens her window, birds flapping past her face to settle on the perch next to her work desk. Grimacing, she retrieves and opens the paper from the messenger hawk closest to her, unfolding it to reveal-

Oh dear.

Taxes.

The door to the queen's study opens softly, and Mikoto enters, one dark brow questing to reach beyond her black fringe as she takes note of her sister: Valla's queen, pouring over a paper-obscured desk, with a messenger hawk perched on the back of her seat and preening her hair.

Not precisely the position Arete expected to be in during her vacation, but the First Dragons work in mysterious ways.

Before her sister could remark upon the (in retrospect) rather odd scene, Arete cleared her throat and broke the bad news. "I'm afraid I will be unable to join you on our jaunt with the pegasi. As you can see, I leave for a few weeks and the castle starts to trip over itself."

"Oh well then. Enjoy your workday, sister dear" Mikoto replies, one eyebrow still damnably raised. It finally lowered when the princess probed "I hope nothing went too wrong. You will be able to stay, right?"

"No, nothing they can't handle themselves it seems. Besides, it would do them good to be weaned off of my support, at least for a while." Arete complained, briefly taking her eyes off of the workload to glance at her sister, calling "Enjoy your ride!" as Mikoto gently shut the door behind her, leaving her beleaguered sister to fight the devils that called themselves 'paperwork'.

Arete did worry a bit for her sister: even though the retreat was fairly isolated, and thus safe from intruders, by that very same isolation should an accident happen there will be little chance of help. She briefly pondered having a single guard follow her, but knowing her sister's prowess in the air the chances of the guard being able to follow her were slim. Mikoto would be fine.

She'd be less bored than Arete was anyways.

Arete woke up to the door to her study slamming open and then shut in quick succession, hastily wiping aways the drooling evidence of her nap. Blinking away the grit from her tired eyes, the blurs in her office resolved into her sister, still in riding gear, and a man in a white cloak, the hood pulled so far down she could hardly see his nose.

While keeping a wary eye on the stranger, the queen pinned her sister with a look demanding answers, grinding out "Mikoto. Why did you bring someone we presumably don't know to the private royal retreat?"

"I can explain-" Mikoto rushed.  
"Wait." Arete commanded, before wheeling to point at the man whose (clawed? how odd.) hand snatched back from the spine of a book. "What is your name, and what is you business this close to private property?"

"Well, I. Um. Don't remember be name? My apologies if I was trespassing, I just woke up in the lake."

A flimsy reason certainly, and Arete was on the verge of saying so when her vision caught up with her mind. The cloaked stranger had raised his hand to sheepishly scrub at his head, the sleeves rolling up to reveal faint grey scales spotting his arm. This and the flash of fangs Arete spotted while he was apologizing sealed it.

Manakete.

Upon realizing this, Arete turned her attention back to Mikoto to hiss out a pertinent question.

"Where did you find him?'

Her sister hurriedly babbled her tale: "Well, I was flying our usual route when i spotted him facedown in the lake; I thought him dead before I approached and he started flailing to shore. I saw what you likely just did, among other things, and made the executive decision to take him home. Besides, I couldn't just leave someone sopping wet in the wilderness with no memories, dragon or no."

Arete was almost too afraid to ask. "Among other things?"

Mikoto turned to the glacier-still manakete in the corner, muttering to him "Friend, if you would lower your cowl? there is no one else here."

The dragon simply nodded his acknowledgement, raising hands to remove the hood.

Five interconnecting red eyes blinked back at Valla's High Queen, who suddenly felt a bit faint.

"Well that certainly is… interesting." Arete finally exhaled after a few awkward moments of watching the eyes blink at her unsettlingly. Despite the naked curiosity and haze of gentle confusion in them, something about looking at the manakete's full face made her feel small.

Like prey.

"Right. Ahem. Now then." she stalled, calling upon the unflappable demeanor she had cultivated as queen. "If you don't remember your name, we need to call you by something. Would Hydra be agreeable? It is an old Vallite name, from when your era likely was."

The newly-christened Hydra pondered at the bookshelf before nodding absentmindedly and saying "Yes, yes, that sounds about right." and said nothing else, his multitude of eyes raking through the tome titles, some going in nauseatingly opposite directions.

Mikoto spoke up in the empty pause. "Why don't we all sleep? I'll take Hydra to a guest room, instruct the servants not to enter. Sister, you look like you are carrying lakes beneath your eyes. Rest, your work can wait."

"Hm. Well, that does sound appealing. But next time, sister dear, alert me when you bring dragons into the house."

"Oh, but where's the fun in that?" Mikoto flung behind her shoulder, attempting to lighten the heavy atmosphere before humming "Good night, sister. Sleep well"; a farewell that Arete returned.

She did not.

She slept with visions of frigid and sunless ocean depths, something huge and flickering in and out of perception that pierced her skull with pain to follow. Unintelligible glacier-words emerging from behind teeth that grinned like mountains.

͎̠ͣ̎͑̃ͣ̂[̙̹̰̥̳̈́ͮ͌s̤̞ͩ̌͊͗͘ι̛̻͕͔̼ℓ̭̌̉̌ͣ̆͗ε͒͑η͋̔c͌ͭε̼̫͌ͯ̓͜]͍̜͚̪̺̠̌ͫ͌̎̏̚͜ ̥̲̽̏̌ͦͭͦ̿͡

͔̦̣̗ͯͅ[̧̪̦͚̣͖̰͉͒̓α͓̃̏ηͤ͂̉ͥ∂̫̞̜̤̌]̠̼̥͍̦̠̫ ̗̦͕̒̒̏͒̍ͭ

[ͪ̈́̿҉͖͚в͍̮͙͔̩̠͂ͯ̏ͤ̿͑̀ℓͧ́̒͋ͭ̊͘σ̨̼͕̤̰͎̬̆͐̆σ̗͕̺̝̗ͬ̐͒̾̍̽̉́∂̟̌̌ͧͭͨ̀͟]̠̭̲̺ͭͯ

She woke with the sensation of frigid deep-water running through her veins, darkness and light-motes in the corner of her eye.

Arete moved to wipe her nose, and her hand came back red with blood.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Notes: Dragons, particularly the incredibly ancient (likely the species/tribe progenitors) ones like Anankos or Naga are more in line with eldritch abominations as opposed to reptiles that are completely visible in the human perception of dimensions.** **I could not kill of Arete's husband, mostly for smoothing over character interaction (is this anti-fridging?) because I'm reasonably sure as soon as she figured out hydra was anankos, the dragon who killed her husband, she'd kill him. no questions asked.** **Additionally, you might recognize someone here, if you've read a previous fic.**

There really wasn't that much blood, really. Just enough to be a nuisance. Arete simply wiped it off before moving to her office to attend to her leftover work from yesterday before the interruption.

The queen found said interruption intruding in her workspace, hissing wordlessly at an angry messenger hawk while he stooped protectively over a stack of books he filched from her library.

Arete sighed the sound of a woman prepared for the day to be over with already. "Hydra, please leave the hawks alone. You can take the books, just please return them in good condition."

The manakete nodded ( _his hood is up, thank the void_ ), absconding quickly, accompanied by a disturbing lack of footstep noises. Locking her door, Arete took a moment after calming the hawk down to examine the empty spaces marking where Hydra pilfered the tomes. From what she could remember, the ones he took were mostly ancient history. Perhaps he was trying to remember? Banishing thoughts of Hydra from her mind, she turned to the message the hawk had delivered; a letter from her husband, but with the wax seal of Valla's Steward as opposed to more personally penned letters.

This boded ill.

Breath held, Arete cracked open the seal and examined the contents thoroughly. The news was dire.

Lord Anankos had rampaged again, this time killing three acolytes and injuring a dozen more. In accordance to the dragon god's request that they lock him should he loose control again, Arete was called to perform the Song, the main force behind the spell that would seal him away. Hopefully, Matsya had added, long enough for Anankos to regain his senses, should it be within years or centuries.

Arete knew better. She had read the personal Vallite histories of the Twelve Ancients and the Dragon War. All examples from the past were clear on one thing.

There were no cases of dragon tribe progenitors regaining their minds once they fell to the Insanity. Matsya was likely the last human to see the water god in his natural state of mind.

Arete only took a few short moments to say farewells to her sister before flying off to Gyges, accompanied by two of the four guards of Glaucon. She reluctantly left Azura behind; despite how separation from her young heir pained her, should anything go catastrophically wrong, staying at the home with Mikoto was the safest place she could be.

The queen, just before the sealing ritual, found the god… lacking. His presence diminished, somehow smaller and more solid, as opposed to the water-like quality of rippling scales, fading in and out of human perception. The shifting expanse of the sphere in his mouth, previously outlines with parallel lines that intersected, impossible to look at directly without bleeding eyes, was dull and unmoving. Washed-out carmine eyes followed her movements as she inhaled, preparing to Sing.

 _This will be a mercy_ , she thought.

Isolde prided herself as being on top of the best gossip in Glaucon. For whatever it was worth, since there were only a few other servants, limited to herself, two others, the cook, and two guards. Frankly, the arrival of Queen Arete and her daughter was the most interesting thing to happen here in years. Really, Lord Anankos's increasingly clouded mind was a popular topic among most of the servants isolated here, but Isolde was more interested in the lives of people.

Such as the stranger Lady Mikoto brought back from her ride, merely a day before the queen's sudden departure.

Despite the festering desire to know _everything_ that went on in Glaucon, Isolde, for once, felt slightly unsettled pursuing new and fresh topic. Hydra, as he was being called, unsettled her deeply for reasons she couldn't quite place. Oh, he was harmless enough, even with his cowl never rising above his nose. She even spied him in the garden, holding Princess Azura while Lady Mikoto was busy, humming a tune the servant had never heard before. Not precisely the image of someone to be feared.

Isolde was not fooled.

Or, at least, her instincts were not. She had an eye for detail that only rumor-mongers shared, and she knew a scaly, sea-brine smelling person for what they really were.

A dragon.

Not that this stopped Isolde from snooping whenever she could. Oh, yes, Hydra's presence seemed large and heavy, despite his relatively small stature, but not even an ancient apex predator could block Isolde's warpath to information. So the servant did what she best. She watched, and waited for something new to break the monotony.

In the coming months, Isolde discovered having a dragon living at the hidden royal retreat was quite a few leagues more boring than she expected. Even the cook, Tethys, had gotten used to more raw fish worming its way into her beloved dishes. This, Rodmilla mused, was unfortunate: Tethys was a minuscule devil of a woman, sharp and ruling with her ladle as a dictator would wield their scepter. That she had actually acquiesced to the horrors of raw food exiting her domain was near proof the world was to break apart (Rodmilla didn't have the heart to tell her that raw fish was essential in some Hoshidan delicacies).

She was also the servant most interested in Isolde's gossip, and might even be considered a friend. If the price for conversing with her was to listen to her infinite complaints, Isolde was more than willing to acquiesce.

As she paced towards the kitchens to hear her friend's latest woes, Isolde passed a sight that was becoming increasingly common: Lady Mikoto, with her niece in her lap, playing the fastest game of chess the servant had ever seen, Hydra's webbed hands keeping up with her smooth movements, but still never able to best the princess. Isolde simply moved on, she had other destinations in mind. Besides, with the increasing amount of time Lady Mikoto was spending with Hydra, the sight became far less interesting to Isolde.

Before reaching the kitchens, Isolde was called aside by a rather smudgy-looking Lancer guard: apparently they needed help redirecting the pipeline from the primary well to an older, smaller well. When she asked why, the guard heaved his shoulders in a perplexed shrug before stating that "For some reason that well started spouting up seawater; didn't even know until the soup was way too salty."

He shivered minutely. "I'd hate to be in the room when Miss Tethys found out. I'm quite fond of all my limbs being attached to me, you see."

Isolde had one of her most fantastic ideas yet: she bargained out of physical labor, making the young guard do her portion of well-herding in exchange for keeping Tethys out of their vicinity. The guard readily agreed, the relief of not having to face Glaucon's deadliest ( _deadliest human, anyways_ ) while fixing her well.

The months continued as monotonously as Isolde had feared they would, though plagued by a few . . . unnatural incidences. The well soon returned to its usual freshwater offerings, with no trace of what made it sea-brine in the first place. Just a few days ago it felt as if gravity intensified immensely, bearing down on the shoulders of everything that lived at Glaucon.

Regardless, Isolde was over the moon. She had, just last night, been in the perfect place to witness Lady Mikoto take Hydra into her rooms. Now, the servant acknowledged that it could be anything, perhaps they simply wished to take tea together (privately) or sharpen themselves on board games, but Isolde had risen before the sun the next morning just to see for herself.

Unable to resist waiting in silence, Isolde crept up and carefully placed her ear to the door, filtering in the legible parts of her lady's conversation with the dragon.

"Mikoto, I truly do think you should write your sister."

"That sounds like an awful idea."

"Perhaps I'm being selfish, and just don't wish to be in the same room with her when you tell her."

"Hmm. I will admit she can be a bit… overprotective at times. I'll think about it."

"That she can be."

A few moments of silence persisted, Isolde straining to catch the lingering ends of the exchange.

"…"

"Would you be impartial to doing it again?"

A flustered, hissing sputtering echoed from the manakete.

Isolde, feeling a bit flustered herself, left soon after hearing Lady Mikoto add the quip: "I love you dearly, but you need some... practice."

"Please refrain from touching my gills, then I will consider it."

Isolde knew everything possible about everyone in this retreat.

But this was shaping up to be something larger than she could handle.

 **Author's notes: you know for being one of the big focuses of this, anankos doesn't get many lines does he. Anyways, poor dude is a bit oblivious to the power incontinence thats causing everyone grief. Also writing Mikoto with some snark is the best.** **And did you really think mikoto and anankos's first time would be nice fanfic stuff nah son he's awful at it. He's both a dragon and the World's Oldest Virgin i don't think it would be anything to write home about).**

 **you can find what Anankos's eyes look like here (thanks to sarurunkamui, u a pal.)**  
 **and a brief note: Arete's dream is not a premonition of any kind: simply it occurs because when you have such a huge power split a god's mind there's going to be some psychic backlash, particularly for the people holding blood pacts with him.**  
 **also the whole fic is complete at this time so y'all don't have to deal with my perpetually late updates (rip after the end's finish date estimate)**


End file.
